Hello. I am a veteran player and reader of this forum, but until now I hadn't really posted much.
I usually play on Immortal difficulty, since on Deity the cheating from the AI is simply to ******ed to even try, you have to exploit something to win or otherwise get stomped. On Immortal, the AI also cheats, and although it does it in a pretty grotesque way, its playable, and I usually either win or get very close to it.
Today I started playing a game as Siam, on Archipielago, Standard, Immortal, normal speed, standard on every other setting. I got a pretty decent spot, and got to it.
Then I noticed there were no City States on my island (as you can guess, my idea was to go for a cultural victory, hence the archipielago-Siam combo). So i rushed Caravels and went on to explore.
Then I found the city states. Austria had bought all of them. Since the AI cheats so damn much with gold, happiness, and with the "coups" (it attempts a coup every turn and more often than not, succeeds), Austria had already bought most city states. Ok, I kept on playing, wasn't doing so bad.
But it kept getting even more ******ed. By the turn 277, Austria had bought ALL city states, but one. This, along with the inherent cheating, pumped its score up to astronomical levels. It has about four times the average score of any other civ in the game, it is building THE APOLLO PROJECT WHILE I AM RESEARCHING CHEMISTRY (and I am not far behind other civs, according to my spies, except of course Austria), granted I went the cultural tech path, but still the difference between this AI and me and any other AI is abysmal, and it has already attempted a coup at Kuala Lumpur last turn, and failed. It will succeed and insta-buy it within the next five turns, I have no doubt.
Here is a screen:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198017273933/screenshot/936998919623264094
So, what to do with this civ? I cannot stop it from cheating. It cheats so much that it always has gold to buy off city states. I've tried Austria and it is very, very powerful for a player too, since you get a full army and a premium city whenever you buy a city state (good location, all the buildings available) for a meager 500ish gold. BUT, you are restricted by happiness, since they are usually so big, that you cannot buy them all at the same time. The AI doesn't have this issue.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any inputs? For me, if this is not fixed, I will just have to restart any game where Austria appears.
Thanks and sorry for the long post!
I usually play on Immortal difficulty, since on Deity the cheating from the AI is simply to ******ed to even try, you have to exploit something to win or otherwise get stomped. On Immortal, the AI also cheats, and although it does it in a pretty grotesque way, its playable, and I usually either win or get very close to it.
Today I started playing a game as Siam, on Archipielago, Standard, Immortal, normal speed, standard on every other setting. I got a pretty decent spot, and got to it.
Then I noticed there were no City States on my island (as you can guess, my idea was to go for a cultural victory, hence the archipielago-Siam combo). So i rushed Caravels and went on to explore.
Then I found the city states. Austria had bought all of them. Since the AI cheats so damn much with gold, happiness, and with the "coups" (it attempts a coup every turn and more often than not, succeeds), Austria had already bought most city states. Ok, I kept on playing, wasn't doing so bad.
But it kept getting even more ******ed. By the turn 277, Austria had bought ALL city states, but one. This, along with the inherent cheating, pumped its score up to astronomical levels. It has about four times the average score of any other civ in the game, it is building THE APOLLO PROJECT WHILE I AM RESEARCHING CHEMISTRY (and I am not far behind other civs, according to my spies, except of course Austria), granted I went the cultural tech path, but still the difference between this AI and me and any other AI is abysmal, and it has already attempted a coup at Kuala Lumpur last turn, and failed. It will succeed and insta-buy it within the next five turns, I have no doubt.
Here is a screen:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198017273933/screenshot/936998919623264094
Spoiler :
So, what to do with this civ? I cannot stop it from cheating. It cheats so much that it always has gold to buy off city states. I've tried Austria and it is very, very powerful for a player too, since you get a full army and a premium city whenever you buy a city state (good location, all the buildings available) for a meager 500ish gold. BUT, you are restricted by happiness, since they are usually so big, that you cannot buy them all at the same time. The AI doesn't have this issue.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any inputs? For me, if this is not fixed, I will just have to restart any game where Austria appears.
Thanks and sorry for the long post!